Why Your Blog Isn’t Converting Readers – And What You Can Do About It

In general, blogs exist to sell a product, service, or idea, building on the options available in store or on your website – but it hardly matters if no one is paying attention.

A great blog starts with strong content marketing, but that’s not always enough to nail the conversion rates you want to see. Rather than writing into an empty void, here’s what you need to know to improve the benefits of every post and make the most of readership conversion.

Look Beyond Traffic

If you’re under the assumption that blogs that get a lot of traffic are always better at conversions, it’s time to change your stance. Rather than just looking at the number of visitors and drawing parallels between high traffic and high conversions, take time to isolate posts that get a lot of readers without a lot of action. Google Analytics can help here, identifying landing page activity in conjunction with blog readership. If blog posts have above average traffic but significantly below average conversions, you can use this information to determine why, exactly, readers are stopping by your blog but failing to take the next step.

While bounce rate and page time can be influential in this kind of analysis, they may be less telling than you think. A high bounce rate isn’t always bad, and high time on page figures aren’t necessarily good. As a marketer, it’s up to you to read between the lines.

Dive Deeper Into Readership Patterns

Perhaps, in the course of your analysis, you’ve determined that one of your most popular posts from the last month attracted a lot of readers but failed to convert more than a handful, even among first-time visitors. You may be inclined to chalk this up to bad luck, but without discovering why, you won’t be able to correct the problem moving forward.

A few different conversion research methodologies can help you identify a starting place, including:

Heuristic analysis

Technical analysis

Qualitative survey

User testing

Mouse tracking analysis

If you don’t have time to spend hours and hours investigating every factor that affects your blog activity, that’s okay, but try to make time for user testing and mouse tracking analysis at the very least.

Determine the Most Appropriate Changes

Once you’ve determined what’s going wrong, you can begin to create a plan for successful changes. For example, if you noticed that most people click away from your page before your sign-up pop-up appears, you can change the timing. If you learn that most people don’t mouse over your chat box or immediately close it, you may decide that a chat box isn’t the right opportunity for conversion. If your posts with content that promotes your free ebook convert better than those with a different call to action, changing up your CTAs might give you a boost to average conversion rates. There’s no right or wrong way to make decisions about your blog posts, but with proper analysis, it’s possible to identify how and why readers are converting – as well as how and why they are not.

A well-managed blog can be a big benefit to companies of all shapes and sizes, creating a compelling way to demonstrate knowledge and industry expertise, develop a brand reputation, and increase potential customer base. However, not all blogs are successful from the start. If you’re struggling to convert readers, analyzing problem posts, further delving into contributing factors, and making appropriate changes can help you right the ship before it’s too late. Looking for help with your content marketing, analytics, or strategy? RivalMind is here. Connect with us today to learn more about how to reach your conversion rate goals.